HBO Max coming in spring 2020, combining HBO and other Time Warner content.

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AT&T will start restricting some Time Warner shows to its own streaming service, despite previously telling the government that it would distribute Time Warner content as widely as possible.

WarnerMedia, the division AT&T created when it bought Time Warner, today announced a new online streaming service called "HBO Max." HBO Max will debut in the spring of 2020 and include exclusives that will no longer be available on other streaming platforms.

HBO Max will have exclusive streaming rights to all episodes of Friends, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and Pretty Little Liars. Friends and Pretty Little Liars are currently available on Netflix, so they'll both leave that service by the time HBO Max launches.

Further Reading

Since the HBO Max exclusives pertain only to streaming rights, the shows could still be available on cable TV services.

HBO Max will also have exclusive streaming rights to upcoming Warner Bros. series such as Batwoman and Katy Keene. AT&T also said HBO Max will have "exclusive movie production deals with Greg Berlanti... and Reese Witherspoon," as well as HBO programming and various "Max Original" series that are in the works.

HBO Max will likely cost "slightly more" than the $14.99 per month currently charged for HBO Now, The Wall Street Journal wrote. HBO Now is primarily a vehicle to distribute HBO-produced shows as well as movies that HBO has streaming rights for. HBO Max will have a bigger library, roping in lots more Time Warner programming, with AT&T saying it will "premiere with 10,000 hours of premium content."

What AT&T told the government

AT&T is making Time Warner shows exclusive to HBO Max even though it told government officials that it would continue to distribute Time Warner content as widely as possible.

Nor is there any reason to believe we could use Time Warner programming or AT&T networks to hurt related markets. Simply put, it would be irrational business behavior to do so. Time Warner's programming is more valuable when distributed to as many eyes as possible. Moreover, in order to have great programming, it is imperative that we attract great creative talent to develop it. The best way to attract that talent is through widespread distribution of Time Warner content.

AT&T was able to complete its purchase of Time Warner without any merger conditions governing video distribution. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai allowed AT&T to avoid an FCC public interest review. The Department of Justice sued AT&T to block the merger, but a US District judge ruled against the DOJ, letting AT&T complete the merger in June 2018 without conditions.

The DOJ had argued that AT&T could harm rival online video services by withholding Time Warner shows and movies or by raising the prices online services have to pay to stream that content.

AT&T raised prices after merger

AT&T has also raised DirecTV Now streaming prices twice since completing the merger, despite telling a judge in a court filing that the merger would "enabl[e] AT&T and Time Warner to reduce consumer prices." The latest DirecTV Now price cut was paired with the elimination of dozens of channels that aren't part of Time Warner.

AT&T also didn't keep a jobs promise related to a federal tax cut. AT&T said it would create 7,000 new jobs with the tax-cut savings—AT&T has cut more than 25,000 jobs instead.

Further Reading

With HBO Max, AT&T could once again take advantage of the FCC's repeal of net neutrality rules. Pai's FCC reversed a commission finding that AT&T violated net neutrality rules with its data-cap exemptions (aka "zero-rating"). The Pai FCC action gave AT&T and other carriers the green light to exempt their own video content from data caps and to charge other video companies for the same data-cap exemptions.

220 Reader Comments

Because no one wants to keep track of a dozen or more subscription services. Congress should mandate licensing terms that allows any platform to stream any content after it is X years old for a set fee structure.

How many different streaming channels are we up to now?All (of course) requiring a subscription.

In an effort for the studios to get all the money, it'll be overload shortly, everyone is gonna burn out, and go back to bittorrent to catch the shows they want to see...and then the studios will lose all the money.

Not a single thing about this surprises me. These companies will spin whatever bullshit they feel like in order to complete these mergers, knowing full well they'll turn around in a couple years after things die down a bit and stick it to the customer in any way they possibly can. And ya know what, nothing will ever happen to them for doing this kind of shit.

I'm genuinely curious as to how the streaming wars will end. How long will it take before the majority of consumers are fed up with paying $5/month here and $6/month there for individual streaming services?

But the "reduced pricing to consumers" was them only hiking the price up twice, not 4 times.

November 30, 2016: quick, someone put together an outrageous price increase plan. We're going before congress!December, 2016; before congress: our merger will save consumers money!After merger, when questioned about prices not decreasing: look, we had this price increase schedule. Due to the merger, we were able to be more lax in our price increases. We're only 300% above inflation despite planning on being 1000% above inflation!

It will be interesting to see how much of a premium they charge over standard HBO Now. I can't imagine that many people wanting to pay more than the $15 HBO Now already commands for a single streaming service, even if it includes additional content.

If they do keep HBO Now as an option, it will also be interesting to see if they shift resources from shows that run on HBO to HBO Max exclusives in order to force people onto the higher priced service.

Seriously... until failure to fulfil pre-merger promises is grounds for immediate and complete rollback of said merger, expect this to happen.

Plus I suspect that AT&T is acting in what passes for them as good faith; if they completely restrict content from production houses they own to only being available on their own streaming service, by definition they ARE distributing Time Warner content as widely as it IS possible to do.

And as for "the merger would "enabl[e] AT&T and Time Warner to reduce consumer prices." yarn? ... Bhwaaaaaaa haha ha ha haaaaaa...

"AT&T will start restricting some Time Warner shows to its own streaming service, despite previously telling the government that it would distribute Time Warner content as widely as possible."

I'm 100% confident that the government will remember this and, in the future, not so quickly take the word of a multi-billion dollar company.

"Confident," am I using that word correctly?

If things were working correctly the attorneys who told the government that as well as all chief executives at the company would be brought up on charges of perjury (okay, at least the CEO, COO and CLO as well as anyone in charge of government liaison/lobbying).

Well, we won't hold the shareholders responsible for corporate malfeasance, because corporations aren't people. We are gonna hold the people accountable who were running the company at the time, plus those currently in charge (because no take-backs) and while we are at it, we are going to need you to stop funneling money in to PACS and any shady lobbying.

This is the reality of ala-carte. People thought they we’re going to get this wholesale $3 per network rate by moving away from cable to streaming. The reality is networks were never going to let that revenue walk.

It's also been confirmed today that Crunchyroll and indeed all of VRV are going to be folded into HBO Max. Now whether that means that Crunchyroll and/or VRV are going to get the axe, or if Crunchyroll and/or VRV will also survive as independent video streaming services, I don't know. Word on the street is that AT&T is also looking to dismantle the DC Universe video streaming service, so that may fold into HBO Max as well.

How many different streaming channels are we up to now?All (of course) requiring a subscription.

In an effort for the studios to get all the money, it'll be overload shortly, everyone is gonna burn out, and go back to bittorrent to catch the shows they want to see...and then the studios will lose all the money.

EDIT:Ninja'd, but no surprise really, it's just common sense.

There were over 200 video streaming services when I checked about six months ago. No joke.

It will be interesting to see how much of a premium they charge over standard HBO Now. I can't imagine that many people wanting to pay more than the $15 HBO Now already commands for a single streaming service, even if it includes additional content.

If they do keep HBO Now as an option, it will also be interesting to see if they shift resources from shows that run on HBO to HBO Max exclusives in order to force people onto the higher priced service.

The higher priced service? You underestimate AT&T. They'll expect you to subscribe to ALL of their HBO - * services.

I'm not so concerned with AT&T keeping its content for its own streaming service because all the competitors that succeed will do likewise, Disney isn't going to share Star Wars and Marvel. Netflix, Amazon and Apple are busy building exclusive original libraries of their own. If AT&T wasn't being selfish, competitors who are selfish would quickly force them to follow suit. What makes people subscribe to this service and not that one is to get content they can't find elsewhere, so there's really no motive for any of these competitors to be unselfish.

Where AT&T could behave badly is in its ISP business, privileging its own streaming service over competitors. I'd be far more concerned about that.

However, we still don't know how many of these services will even survive in the long run. AT&T seems to be badly off target here. They're mismanaging the HBO brand badly, shoehorning a bunch of old, decidedly non-premium broadcast content under the HBO brand. They should have used Warners as the base brand and saved HBO only for truly premium content. The result is a confusing mishmash of crap and if we wanted that, we could stick with Netflix, right?

We may not have to worry about AT&T making the cut after all. There will be only 4 or 5 winners in the end, there's no guarantee about AT&T at all. And if they blow it, Apple or Amazon would be happy to purchase the rights to HBO and GoT at the fire sale. That is, if those brands have any value left after AT&T gets done destroying them,

It is almost getting old using that line on articles by AT&T. I think it should just be embedded in the articles at this point as the the lead. "Are you shocked you that AT&T Lied...here's why!" (sigh)

Perhaps government officials should just lean into the idea that any time an AT&T executive opens its mouth to say "We won't do what we want to do" they understand it is the old Jedi mind trick and just ignore them.

"We want to help the homeless"..."No AT&T, for what you really want to do is exploit the homeless or use them as batteries or something...no"

"Honestly, we want to do good and to show you, allow us to pay off the national debt. How can that be bad?" "No AT&T. Then you'll own Congress and get to dictate whatever hellscape you want...just, no"

Because no one wants to keep track of a dozen or more subscription services. Congress should mandate licensing terms that allows any platform to stream any content after it is X years old for a set fee structure.

Do you honestly expect Congress to interfere with the free market to that degree? They can barely stand allowing Americans to have health care that won't bankrupt and/or kill them. They're never going to worry about stuff like this (and I'd much rather they work on more serious problems and just let the corporations duke it out and see who is standing at the end.)

How many different streaming channels are we up to now?All (of course) requiring a subscription.

In an effort for the studios to get all the money, it'll be overload shortly, everyone is gonna burn out, and go back to bittorrent to catch the shows they want to see...and then the studios will lose all the money.

EDIT:Ninja'd, but no surprise really, it's just common sense.

They won't lose "all." What will happen is, piracy will accelerate what is going to happen anyway: people subscribe to a couple services and for anything they can't get there, they pirate or (more likely) ignore the rest. This will result in a nosebleed high cutoff point for survival that results in 4 or at most 5 services that grow into global behemoths that dominate entertainment creation and distribution going forward.

Right now, I'm getting a lot less confident that AT&T will make the cut. Everything about this HBO Max nonsense just seems clueless, especially when compared with the likes of Disney - which is frighteningly smart and on the ball when it comes to entertainment brand management.

Not a single thing about this surprises me. These companies will spin whatever bullshit they feel like in order to complete these mergers, knowing full well they'll turn around in a couple years after things die down a bit and stick it to the customer in any way they possibly can. And ya know what, nothing will ever happen to them for doing this kind of shit.

And nothing will keep happening because it's now up to citizens to take direct action.

This is the reality of ala-carte. People thought they we’re going to get this wholesale $3 per network rate by moving away from cable to streaming. The reality is networks were never going to let that revenue walk.

No, they were not. But they now have to at least try to compete for it by producing programming that people will want to pay for with subscriptions rather than just riding along on monolithic cable packages.

Veteran programming executives leaving HBO after decades of work isn't going to help one bit when AT&T hopes to get even more money out of the network.

This type of anticompetitive nonsense has got to be against some law or other. And if it's not...

Maybe we need a new compulsory licensing scheme to account for the move to streaming?

There is nothing anti-competitive about creating a service to compete with another service.

A mandatory licensing scheme is an interesting concept though. Because, ultimately, you're just replacing your cable TV bill with a streaming bill at similar cost. But at least it would create the chance of a unified platform. And for bonus irony, run as an app for your TV that allows you to change "channels" when switching between Netflix, CBS, HBO, etc.